This volume gathers fourteen new essays devoted to Old English prose saints’ lives from the late Anglo-Saxon period. Moving from diverse methodological approaches and building on the most recent developments in primary and secondary scholarship, the contributions comprehensively consider the texts and contexts of the vernacular hagiographic output both by Ælfric, the major hagiographer of his day, and by anonymous authors. By means of a comprehensive scrutiny of the Latin source-texts, including the often neglected Vitas Patrum, as well as of both the historical and manuscript context, this collection contributes to outline the late Anglo-Saxon sanctorale and to advance our knowledge of the literary culture and intellectual history of pre-Conquest England and beyond.

Concetta Giliberto (University of Palermo), The Descensus ad inferos in the Old English Prose Life of St Guthlac and Vercelli Homily xxiiiGiuseppe D. De Bonis (University of Neaples ‘L’Orientale’), The Birth of Saint John the Baptist: a Source Comparison between Blickling homily xiv and Ælfric’s Catholic Homily I.25Claudio Cataldi (University of Palermo), St Andrew in the Old English Homiletic TraditionPatrizia Lendinara (University of Palermo), Forgotten MissionariesMaria Caterina De Bonis (University of Potenza), An Unfinished Drawing of St Benedict in a Neglected Manuscript of the Regula Sancti Benedicti (Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O.2.30)Catherine Cubitt (University of York), Reading 10-11th Century Benedictine Hagiography against the Politics of the Reign of Æthelred

THE POST-CONQUEST LEGACY OF ANGLO-SAXON HAGIOGRAPHY

Rosalind Love (University of Cambridge), Folcard of Saint-Bertin and the Anglo-Saxon Saints at ThorneyRoberta Bassi (Université Stendhal - Grenoble 3), St Oswald in Early English Chronicles and Narratives

Review

"The collection as a whole is noteworthy for its breadth of scope and for the meticulous, abundantly footnoted source studies carried out by the contributors. Any scholar of Anglo-Saxon hagiography might benefit as much from the footnotes as from the essays themselves. (...) the volume will be useful to scholars and students of Anglo-Saxon hagiography, literature, history, religious culture, and manuscript studies." (Rhonda L. McDaniel, in Peritia 26, 2015, p. 267-269)

"Anglo-Saxon prose hagiography, especially anonymous and Anglo-Latin texts, has been understudied and undervalued for too long. Fortunately, the tide is beginning to turn, as evidenced by this new collection, and the further research that this work will no doubt enable." (Robin Norris, in Speculum, 91/3, 2016, p. 812)